Breaking point
by duj
Summary: WIP "The night would bring him neither rest nor comfort till he'd spoken to Albus so he might as well get it over with..."
1. Breaking Point

BREAKING-POINT

**This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.**

**A/N: Spoilers**

He was Severus Snape, Potions-Master, Professor of Hogwarts, reformed Death Eater and spy for the Order of the Phoenix. Head of Slytherin House and Albus Dumbledore's right-hand man even as Minerva was right-hand woman. Third in the chain of command in all school affairs. At least he had been before Umbridge turned up and would be again when Albus returned. Why was he still defined by the events of his schooldays twenty years ago?

It was an answer he didn't have. It was a question he'd almost given up asking but this evening's events had forced it on him again. Potter! It was always that brat Potter.

He pulled himself wearily from the chair he'd collapsed into, forcing his hands to unclench, and dragged himself to the door of his office. He glared at the scattered cockroach bits and shards of glass spilling into the corridor. Filch would want to know who and why if he saw that mess. He didn't want to talk to Filch tonight.

"Evanesco," he muttered and trudged on, letting the door bang shut behind him.

Would this torture ever stop? It would be another two years before the brat finished school but it felt more like two hundred. Two centuries in Azkaban. That boy was like a Dementor, sucking away the few good memories and dragging him back to those he most wished to lose.

His lips curled in a self-loathing smirk. He'd told the brat at their first Occlumency lesson that it was only "weak people" and "fools" who couldn't control their emotions, who wallowed in sad memories and allowed themselves to be provoked so easily. He'd bleated about controlling his anger, disciplining his mind.

So where did that leave him? Weakest, most foolish of all, that couldn't look at young Potter without recalling that other earlier Potter and his gang, without seeing hazel eyes replace green and lightning scar fade to smooth unmarked forehead.

Arrogant over-praised interchangeable Potter. Always his breaking point. He could stand in front of the Dark Lord and lie with a straight face and a blank mind but he couldn't spend one minute in the company of a Potter without boiling over into a fury.

"Five points from Ravenclaw," he snarled, seeing the Brocklehurst girl scurrying out of sight in the distance. She must have been "studying" with Zabini again. He'd talk to him later. Not tonight.

James blasted Potter. He'd had it all, everything a young Severus Snape had ever wanted and known he'd never have: wealth, popularity, Quidditch stardom, academic brilliance, friends to stand beside him in a fight and that crooked smile that made everyone worship him. Everyone except Lily Evans - and even she had fallen for it in the end.

"If he'd ever turned it on me I'd have worshipped him too," he thought bleakly with the self-knowledge he'd taken years to acquire and still found as painful as juggling broken glass. "I'd have clapped and cheered, knuckled my forehead and licked his muddy boots." How jealous he'd been of Peter Pettigrew, untalented and unprepossessing, but still part of that confident arrogant group that could do no wrong in anyone's eyes.

His hands had balled into fists again. He swallowed the jagged fireball in his throat and walked on.

"If he'd ignored me I'd have been content to be invisible."

Ugly, scrawny and unlovable as his father had always told him he was, he'd always known the best he could ever hope for was to be unnoticed.

But no, Potter had had to hate him on sight. What else could he do but reciprocate?From their first meeting as new students on the Hogwarts Express till their graduation seven years later it had been constant, gradually escalating, warfare between them except for that one time Potter had decided he didn't want blood on his friend's claws.

Only Potter's friends had always stood by his side watching his back while his own "friends" always made themselves scarce. Afterwards they'd point out that it wasn't their fight and why should they fall foul of the Golden Gryffindors or their teacher-protectors. How could he have reproached them? He'd been too grateful that they tolerated him at all.

It didn't take long to reach his rooms. He paused at the door and wheeled around. He didn't want to speak to Albus either. Oh he knew he'd have to but not quite yet. They had anticipated that the headmaster might be forced out again and had taken the precaution of preparing a method for emergency communication.

Emergencies! Albus had only been gone two days and already they'd spoken twice, once about the Veritaserum toadface Umbridge had demanded – he'd substituted fake serum of course, hoping Potter wouldn't be stupid or arrogant enough to let her realise – and again about the appointment of a student Inquisitorial Squad. He'd also told him about the Weasley twins' firework mayhem. That for once had been almost amusing. He'd warded his own classroom though because the combination of fireworks and potions was just too dangerous.

Once he was in his chambers he'd have no excuse to delay contacting him again but he wasn't ready to face those blue eyes. Whether twinkling or stern they were too persuasive and saw too deeply. He needed a period of quiet reflection first. Time to decide how to plead his case.

Where, then? He wouldn't get it patrolling. Besides he didn't want to talk to students either, not even to take points. As a teacher he'd always managed to channel his irritability into words but tonight he'd come close to hexing that brat into oblivion. Too close. He wasn't going to risk giving his temper free reign on a substitute.

So no Astronomy Tower either. No interrupting amorous trysts to remind him of what he'd never had, he was too explosive tonight to deal safely with miscreants.

And nowhere, most of all not that, nowhere he might run into Umbridge! So no Hospital Wing, no interview with Montague hexed into a toilet amnesiac and half-dead. Fortunately Poppy hadn't asked him to brew anything for the boy; she'd wanted to try what was on hand first. So all that could wait till tomorrow.

The Forbidden Forest it was then. He'd been planning to harvest some night-blooming hyssop from the forest edge. Tonight was as good a night as any.


	2. Upon Interrogation

UPON INTERROGATION

**This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and situations elaborated herein.**

**A/N: Spoilers**

It was almost midnight when Professor Snape entered his private rooms. He had gathered a basketful of hyssop, stripped the leaves and separated the blooms from the stems. They were lying in three separate drying trays in his laboratory. As he warded the door behind him he allowed his shoulders to slump from their forced erect posture. It was late but not too late. Albus would still be awake.

After turning the matter over in his mind for hours as he worked he still had no words but he knew that upon interrogation the words would come; whether convincing or weak-sounding he'd find out as he heard himself say them. The night would bring him neither rest nor comfort till he'd spoken to Albus so he might as well get it over with.

He walked into his bedroom and warded that too. Standing in front of his mirror he stuck out his tongue, stretched his mouth with a finger at each end pulling one side up and the other down, and opened his eyes as mad-staring-wide as they would go. He looked like a gargoyle – or a witless fool.

The mirror was keyed to him alone. Transmission was triggered by the impossible-to-counterfeit involuntary expression of mortified disbelief that always flashed in his eyes. Neither Veritaserum nor Imperio could force that look out of him because both disabled the critical analytic function and self-awareness that combined to produce it. He had to admire Dumbledore's genius even as he cringed.

The mirror's frame was silver and enamel with an embossed design of butterflies and flowers. Albus's eyes had danced with mischievous delight as he'd presented it to him. Its communication spell was masked by the other stronger spells by which talking mirrors are made and by the silencing charm he had immediately cast upon first inspecting it. Looking into a mirror was bad enough without having to hear it echo his thoughts.

"Albus."

Twinkling blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles came into focus, then a long crooked nose, a quantity of silver hair and beard and slightly pursed lips.

"Severus. Another emergency?"

"Of sorts. I've terminated the Occlumency lessons." He met the headmaster's frown with the numb resignation of a condemned prisoner.

"I assume you have a reason that you deem satisfactory." Dumbledore sounded as if he'd bitten into a lemon drop filled with caustic soda.

Snape's eyes fell. Thin shoulders were squared. Long fingers clenched into fists, nails digging into palms.

"You'll recall accepting my condition that Potter have no access to certain of my memories. I was called away from tonight's lesson – Montague was found obliviated and jammed in a toilet – I returned to find Potter in my Pensieve," he said, hoping he didn't sound whiny.

Dumbledore's eyes opened wide.

"You hadn't dismissed him from your office?"

"I had, of course, but I didn't stay to see him leave." A note of bitterness crept into the deadened voice. "My mistake for expecting scruples from his father's son."

"Severus!" the tone was a reproof.

Snape folded his lips and waited in resentful silence.

"You know how important it is that Harry learn Occlumency," the older man said. Important enough that he'd unhesitatingly handed over the school to Umbridge and the Ministry rather than let Harry be separated from the opportunity.

Snape winced.

"I know," he muttered.

"You know also that you are in more danger than anyone from his connection with Riddle. Your secret's in his head for the taking." Let Riddle catch one glimpse of Severus baring his Dark Mark to Fudge or leaving an Order meeting at Grimmauld Place and he'd know the Potions-master for a traitor. Fortunately it had never occurred to him to rifle through Harry's mind.

The lessons are just as dangerous," Snape argued. "If the Dark Lord looks through the boy's eyes he'll see me teaching how to evade him and he could make him execute me on the spot." Under normal circumstances Potter was too inexperienced and untrained to be a match for him but Potter possessed by the Dark Lord was another matter.

"But that danger exists only for the short time they span. The other is continuous and indefinite," Dumbledore insisted.

"I know," Snape growled.

"And yet you refuse to teach him?"

The younger man shook his head and swallowed a few times. Here it came.

"When have I ever refused you anything? If you order it I will teach him. But if I have to teach him again I believe I'll end up killing him. Probably quite soon." There was no defiance in the weary voice. It was a prediction not a threat.

There was a short charged silence then Dumbledore asked in a too quiet voice, "You believe you'll kill him?"

Snape's shoulders sagged as if the weight on them had suddenly doubled.

"Albus, for fourteen years I've never raised violent hands against a student! But when I found him tonight – I pushed him to the ground, Albus! I threw a jar of roaches at his head!" He gulped. "I'd have thrown a jar of Nundu's breath if it had come to hand."

"You don't have a jar of Nundu's breath," Dumbledore retorted. It was far too dangerous. Shattering such a jar would kill everyone in Hogwarts, possibly everyone for miles.

"I've other poisons almost as toxic. I threw what was closest, not what was safe."

"I'm sure you keep them locked away out of reach. You couldn't throw one by accident."

The attempt at comfort failed. Snape closed his eyes and hung his head, biting hard on the inside of his left cheek. His face flushed with shame.

"Not by accident, no," he breathed. He lifted defeated eyes to the man whose disappointment he feared more than the Dark Lord's fury. "You don't understand what it is to hate."

Blue eyes searched black. Dumbledore sighed.

"Do you hate him enough to let Tom win?" he asked softly.

"In my saner moments, no. But when I'm in the boy's head I would rip out my own bowels to tie them around his neck!" Snape spat, his voice rising and his breath coming in short sharp bursts. He covered his eyes with one roughened hand.

"I can't teach him, Albus, I can't."

The headmaster watched his heaving shoulders in thoughtful silence.

"He's not James," he pointed out after a long pause.

Snape's hand fell but he didn't meet the other's eye.

"He looks at me with the same hate. He treats me with the same contempt." And you look at him with the same love. That was a thought he'd never voice. "Arrogant, insolent – The more I guard him the more he scorns my advice."

"The lessons weren't going well," Dumbledore mused.

His friend snorted. This was well-worn ground.

"They were disastrous, he got worse not better. He's more open to the Dark Lord than he was when we started."

Dumbledore made a vague noise encouraging him to continue.

"He's only thrown me out of his head once since that first time. The more I've told him to empty his mind the more it floods with his loathing. It's the first thing I feel when I enter and it's everywhere."

He scowled and rubbed his eyes. Teaching mind shielding was like teaching a mute to speak; you had to wait for him to make sounds before you could start to shape them. Only in Occlumency that translated into finding islets of objectivity, clean passion-free memories that could be built up into a reflective wall. The Potter brat seemed to have none.

He'd rummaged through Potter's mind, steering deliberately clear of any experiences he himself had figured in, searching for a starting point. But finding his way had been like swimming through flame-gel, thick choking and sticky, scalding through his skin to leave him blistered and raw. And that time the boy had followed him back into his own head via a Protego had left a lingering scorched trail that spread after each session and made reinserting the all-too-similar memories of that other Potter prick like needles of fire.

"What can I do? I can't fashion him a shield out of nothing!" he burst out.

"I see," the older man sighed. "What would you have me do? You're the only Occlumens at Hogwarts now."

Snape gave a helpless shrug.

"I'll do whatever you tell me, you know that," he said. He hated to give up but only grim persistence had kept him at a task that had long seemed hopeless.

"Is Riddle often in his head?" Dumbledore asked.

"Every night in his dreams, I'd guess. Every lesson he's moved further down that corridor. He's barging into the trap as recklessly as ever."

"And you think even so he's in more danger from you?" Dumbledore probed.

"Yes," Snape muttered. Trawling through the unreasoning fury the brat's mind directed at him had hardened antipathy into abhorrence.

"You can't exclude him from Potions classes. Can you restrain yourself?"

"There I can ignore him. He'll probably enjoy being left alone. If he can't be bothered to learn what he needs to know," he shrugged, "then he just won't learn it."

"He's our only hope to defeat Tom," Dumbledore reminded him.

"In that case I imagine we have no hope whatsoever." Snape's Adams apple bobbed up and down a few times. "I'm sorry."

"No, this was my mistake," Albus assured him. "I should have remembered that some wounds run too deep. I'll have to think about this. I don't see any alternatives at present. And Severus? I trust you. Remember that."

Dumbledore's face faded from the mirror, replaced by a bent head of greasy black hair. Snape didn't see the exchange. After a moment he took a few jerky steps and sank down onto his hard-backed chair to stare into the empty fireplace. Hours later he was still there, dry-eyed and motionless.

**A/N Real-world hyssop flowers from June to October. Night-blooming hyssop is my own invention and flowers whenever I want it to.**

**This chapter was written first but required major revision after chapter 1 was completed. One point that occurred to me was that Snape could have seen any of Harry's memories, proving the boy's guilt and satisfying his own curiosity, yet canon doesn't mention him viewing a single Snape-related incident in any Occlumency lesson. **

**Despairing of finding a wizard equivalent for napalm Ihad posted this chapter using slime instead of flame-gel but luckily inspiration hit. Hence a hasty re-post.**


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